Atheism Peaks, While Spiritual Groups Move Toward Convergence

[Kharakov]

The point being that these things are currently unknown. But, importantly, they are known not to have influence on human scales.

They are known not to be detected by human experiments. They are known not to be created in the LHC. This != they are known not to have influence at human scales. If the only way for them to interact is for an intelligent entity to coordinate their interactions, of course we aren't going to detect them interacting, unless an entity purposefully causes us to detect their interactions.

Could be that they are higher dimensional matter, with particles that flit through our 3d space slice like a 3d particle would flit through flatland- without any duration. Remember that particles can teleport through thin "solid" sheets of metal because of superposition. Imagine a sheet of zero thickness- how likely is a particle to be on one side or the other? The same thing applies to particles with greater than 3 dimensions of space freedom.

Say that we are confined to SM_3d matter. Say that there is SM_4d matter as well. Smashing together SM_4d matter, you might be able to create SM_3d particles, but not the other way around (for various reasons).

SM_4d matter does not regularly interact with SM_3d matter because a SM_4d particle as no duration of existence in 3d space (w axis distance is 0. Not a tiny amount. 0.) This doesn't mean that it cannot extend some sort of fields into 3d space, or perhaps create SM_3d particles by precise tech.

They could be due to 'normal' matter and energy, or to some 'exotic' matter or energy. But they could NOT enable intervention in human affairs by Gods, aliens or anything else; nor could they enable life after death.

If beings evolved out of SM_4d first, and they are much more advanced than us, there is no reason they couldn't have tech that allows them to interact with us, even copying the information of our brains. Heck, they might have seeded this world with life from another galaxy, with the intent of starting a new civilization. Or perhaps it's easier to raise babies in 3d space, because they get lost in 4d space.

Not only that, you don't know that there is not SM tech that allows the download of human consciousness/memories.

But one of the knowns is that those unknowns cannot have any current influence on human affairs.

No it isn't. The SM doesn't even have a working model for gravity, neutrino oscillations, etc. One of the known knowns is that it is incomplete. QFT as well.

Higher dimensional matter? Maybe. Intelligent spacetime? Yeah. We don't even need to go far past the SM to find spacetime still is fucking with everyone.. since the beginning.

 

[bilby]

They are known not to be detected by human experiments. They are known not to be created in the LHC. This != they are known not to have influence at human scales. If the only way for them to interact is for an intelligent entity to coordinate their interactions, of course we aren't going to detect them interacting, unless an entity purposefully causes us to detect their interactions.

Could be that they are higher dimensional matter, with particles that flit through our 3d space slice like a 3d particle would flit through flatland- without any duration. Remember that particles can teleport through thin "solid" sheets of metal because of superposition. Imagine a sheet of zero thickness- how likely is a particle to be on one side or the other? The same thing applies to particles with greater than 3 dimensions of space freedom.

Say that we are confined to SM_3d matter. Say that there is SM_4d matter as well. Smashing together SM_4d matter, you might be able to create SM_3d particles, but not the other way around (for various reasons).

SM_4d matter does not regularly interact with SM_3d matter because a SM_4d particle as no duration of existence in 3d space (w axis distance is 0. Not a tiny amount. 0.) This doesn't mean that it cannot extend some sort of fields into 3d space, or perhaps create SM_3d particles by precise tech.

They could be due to 'normal' matter and energy, or to some 'exotic' matter or energy. But they could NOT enable intervention in human affairs by Gods, aliens or anything else; nor could they enable life after death.

If beings evolved out of SM_4d first, and they are much more advanced than us, there is no reason they couldn't have tech that allows them to interact with us, even copying the information of our brains. Heck, they might have seeded this world with life from another galaxy, with the intent of starting a new civilization. Or perhaps it's easier to raise babies in 3d space, because they get lost in 4d space.

Not only that, you don't know that there is not SM tech that allows the download of human consciousness/memories.

But one of the knowns is that those unknowns cannot have any current influence on human affairs.

No it isn't. The SM doesn't even have a working model for gravity, neutrino oscillations, etc. One of the known knowns is that it is incomplete. QFT as well.

Higher dimensional matter? Maybe. Intelligent spacetime? Yeah. We don't even need to go far past the SM to find spacetime still is fucking with everyone.. since the beginning.

We apparently need a psychiatric delusions forum. This crap doesn't appear to belong in any of the fora we currently have.

 

[lpetrich]

The Standard Model isn't the final answer ...

But I don't see how this could support anyone's pet theology or metaphysics.

Then you have failed to grasp just how desperate some people are to find any hint of a crack into which they could squeeze their crazy beliefs.

Sort of like all the people who claim to be interested in quantum mechanics when they are really interested in interpretations of QM rather than in trying to learn QM itself, math and all.

Some of QM I find very elegant, like the ladder-operator forms of QM harmonic oscillators and angular momentum. But it takes a lot of math to build up to setting up those ladder operators, sad to say.

-

More on Standard-Model problems:

Neutrino masses. Easy to extend the SM to include them. If their source is the Higgs mechanism, then that requires oddly small interaction coefficients. That's led some physicists to propose a "seesaw mechanism", where the non-SM parts, the "right-handed neutrinos", have large "Majorana masses". However, neutrinos also have Higgs-derived masses, and these interact with the right-handed masses to give the small observed masses.

Strong CP violation. Its absence mean either fine tuning or another elementary particle, the "axion".

Matter-antimatter asymmetry. Weak interactions can violate CP symmetry, and CP violation combined with baryon-number violation and a time-asymmetric early Universe will yield this asymmetry. However, there are several ways that this can happen, and there is only one observed number that they have to fit, so it may be difficult to make progress here.

Dark matter. Likely some Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). I've come across several possible WIMP candidates, and WIMP's have yet to be convincingly detected nongravitationally.

Dark energy. Like dark matter, evidence for it is still gravitation-only. I've seen it attributed to a spin-0 field that some people have called "quintessence".

Inflation. This is usually attributed to a spin-0 field called the inflaton (no second i). It got stuck for a while in a cosmological-constant-like state, making exponential expansion.

Gravity. Hard to quantize. Two favorite solutions for doing so are string theory and loop quantum gravity.

Higgs-particle instability. If one extrapolates the plain Standard Model up to very high energies, one gets a troublesome vacuum instability. This instability goes away if one adds supersymmetry, making the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).

Gauge unification. The QCD and electroweak coupling constants approach each other at high energies. With the MSSM, they get very close at about 2*10^(16) GeV. This suggests that they are parts of some larger gauge multiplet that split up by symmetry breaking at around that energy.

Elementary-fermion unification. Gauge unification makes the elementary fermions fit into a relatively small number of multiplets, including as few as one per generation.

Some of these solutions are rather arcane, but they don't involve woo-woo mongering.

 

[Kharakov]

We apparently need a psychiatric delusions forum. This crap doesn't appear to belong in any of the fora we currently have.